Trackline Express is a quirky, funny and unique journey

Trackline Express is a game all about getting your train across an unforgiving desert, and it's a whole lot of fun coming from Bubblebird Studio who also made the cute Haven Park. Note: key provided by KeyMailer.

Going into Trackline Express I thought I was getting something a bit like Unrailed! but it's actually very different. Here it's much more of a crafting and people-management adventure, while also defending a train from various AI characters you meet that wish to destroy it. There's plenty of chaos but I adore it, especially the scraggly drawn graphics that really give it a lot of charm.

The gameplay has a nice loop to it too and in some ways it's a lot more relaxed compared to Unrailed!. You start off alone, gradually getting more passengers as you go, with each passenger able to contribute to the journey and you can switch between the passengers at any time. So you can have one off chopping wood, one mining coal to keep you going, one defending you from barbarian attacks and so on. The train also only moves when you put someone in the engine, so you move on when you're stocked-up and ready to go.

It's all about managing your time, along with the finite resources in each section. Each passenger has their own health and a water bar too with all the actions costing water, so you need to keep sending your passengers around to little pools and water pumps to fill back up again. 

The crafting system is quite interesting too. Giving you various tools to get resources, buildings to help transform resources like ore into actual usable Iron and you can even build new parts for your train. When you want to craft something you have to pay to unlock it using coins you've gathered or sold resources for, then you place down the blueprint to dump resources into to eventually build it. 

Click images to enlarge them

Don't have enough resources for what you wanted to build? Just pick up the blueprint, even if it has some resources in it, and make a run for it while another passenger runs the train. This is needed, because you only have a limited safe area around the train, as going outside it hurts your passenger and losing a passenger can be quite fatal to your plans. You can also place buildings on your train, to take useful things like a Forge on the go.

Quite silly overall but I've been really enjoying it.

All this because you're trying to get away from wildfires, so if you take too long, eventually it will catch up to you.

Left something behind? You can set the train to go backwards to go and grab it too. It's such an overall odd blending of game mechanics, but it all comes together quite nicely.

Just be prepared for failure, because you will fail. Sometimes because you die during an attack, sometimes because you've just messed up the resources and need to restart a section. That is one slight issue with it, because the resources are finite like trees, mines and pools only giving a specific amount of each, you could end up stuck. But that's also part of the challenge - using everything wisely.

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It has Native Linux support and I had no problems there at all, it all worked very nicely. I can easily recommend this one for those of you looking for something entertaining that's a bit different to a lot of what's coming out lately. Trackline Express is a game full of character that's well worth picking up. High replay value too so you'll get plenty of hours out of this one.

Available to buy on Steam.